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FTR #80 Fascism à La Mode

Lis­ten now: Side 1 [1] | Side 2 [2]

One of the most impor­tant ele­ments in French elec­toral pol­i­tics as the cen­tu­ry draws to a close, Jean-Marie Le Pen and his fas­cist Nation­al Front have suc­ceed­ed by using a polit­i­cal for­mu­la sim­i­lar to that being used by the Amer­i­can right. Found­ed by for­mer Gestapo and SS col­lab­o­ra­tors and vet­er­ans of the Vichy fas­cist gov­ern­ment that col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazis, the Nation­al Front is the proud­ly out­spo­ken heir to the Vichy. Le Pen has gained polit­i­cal mileage by run­ning against “cor­rupt politi­cians,” “immi­grants” (peo­ple of col­or in par­tic­u­lar), “crime in the streets,” “destruc­tive for­eign cul­tur­al influ­ences” and “left­ists.” All of these are fre­quent rhetor­i­cal tar­gets of the Amer­i­can right-wing. In addi­tion, the Nation­al Front is pur­su­ing a strat­e­gy of estab­lish­ing grass-roots, local polit­i­cal con­trol in order to build a dom­i­nant pow­er base — a strat­e­gy being pur­sued by the Chris­t­ian right in the Unit­ed States.